It’s close to the office, a favourite form of exercise and lets her work on her suntan in the middle of the workday.

There’s one even bigger reason why Danielle Nerman has joined the crowd of swimmers this summer at Calgary’s Bowview outdoor pool.

“It makes me feel like a kid again,” says the CBC Radio producer as she gets set to jump into the pool for the Wednesday noon lane swim. “There’s a real nostalgic feel you get swimming in these old pools on a sunny day.”

While she’s been a diehard swimmer for years now, Nerman only discovered Calgary’s outdoor pools last year when doing a story on how the June flood devastated Stanley Park. “I didn’t even know there were 25-metre outdoor pools in the city,” says the native of Vancouver, who moved to Calgary eight years ago. “Now I swim outside every chance I get.”

Like Nerman, I too am a regular at Calgary’s outdoor pools. Standing outside Bowview interviewing her and other regulars as they excitedly arrive on one of the last great days of summer, in fact, makes me feel like a kid who just missed the Dickie Dee ice cream truck.

For those who have a stake in the success of the city’s eight outdoor pools, the closing of the 2014 season is being greeted with a happy sigh of relief.

“I’d rate this year a 9 out of 10, almost perfect,” says Mike Gavan, executive director for the Calgary Outdoor Swimming Pools Association. “The last three years were only about a 7 and the ones before that were only about a 4.”

For nearly a decade Gavan has been overseeing seven of Calgary’s eight outdoor pools, after the city’s parks and recreation department considered shutting them down due to the deadly combination of high upkeep and low revenue.

Since then, it’s been a decade of roller-coaster ups and downs, mostly due to the vagaries of a Calgary summer. “We are completely dependent on the weather for a good year,” he says. “As we all know, this has mostly been a stellar summer for high temperatures and sunny days.”

While some of us diehards have been frustrated over the traffic jams during the lunch hour lane swims, for Gavan, a retired city parks employee, the crowds have been more than welcome. “We don’t have all the numbers in, but it looks like we’re at about 30 per cent higher revenues than last year.”

The summer of 2013 is one he and his fellow devotees of keeping this summer tradition alive would rather forget. The June flood devastated the Stanley Park pool right after a major renovation; that was followed by more than our fair share of cool rainy days. “A bad summer puts a lot of pressure on the operations,” says Gavan, who notes most of any profits from a given year go right back into keeping the aging facilities alive.

Still, for those of us who can’t imagine summer without swimming outdoors, it’s a sacrifice well worth it.

“I try to be here the first day it opens until the day it closes,” says Andrew Wallace, a local developer who races in to the Bowview pool entrance in a dark suit. “You can exercise outside, which makes you feel a little bit better about having to go to work on a summer day.”

While outdoor pool aficionados are squeezing the last days of summer before the final hurrah on Labour Day, those of us hoping to return to indoor swimming might be feeling a little pinched: no less than three City of Calgary indoor pools are shut down for the first several days of fall, all undergoing varying degrees of renovation.

It’s a situation Joe Moore acknowledges is far from optimal.

“It’s not normal,” says Moore, superintendent of west recreation for the City of Calgary. “But we’re also dependent on construction timing and the trades have been very busy this past year.” In addition, says Moore, traditional shutdown times for pool maintenance are when kids go back to school. “It’s the quietest time of the year,” he says, noting that the first of the closed pools, Foothills, will reopen September 16 while Beltline is set for a September 22 reopening. Glenmore pool is scheduled to be back in operation by October 4.

For devoted swimmers like Danielle Nerman, whose regular haunts are at Glenmore and Beltline, it makes the last days of summer all the more precious. “Let’s hope the weather holds,” she says as she snaps her black bathing cap over her hair. “I want to get in as much swimming outside as I can.”

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